Finding Yourself in San Fran
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been in San Francisco. The last time I visited I was 8 and cried on the Golden Gate bridge because I was so scared that it was going to fall at any moment. Coming back as an adult, especially a queer adult, and being able to fully take in everything the city has to offer in terms of culture has been amazing. Just seeing the sheer amount of queer acceptance is baffling. I used to get super hype about just seeing a rainbow/progress flag in the window of a coffee shop in downtown Eau Claire but seeing them everywhere is something completely different. And not just the general rainbow/progress flag, but the ace flag, the trans flag, the enby flag, seeing all of it means so much more. Knowing that while the prior is still a show of support, here it’s not just that, but a showing of understanding, a sign that here there are people like you, like me. And having that type of feeling is something extremely alien to me as someone who’s grown up for most of their (conscious) life in the South and rural Midwest. And being able to share this experience with a bunch of other queer students makes that feeling of acceptance and understanding stronger.
Just being around all of this stuff still feels odd though. It kind of feels like someone did a 180 from saying, “I don’t quite understand what you’re going through, but I guess I support you“ and then never really bringing it up again, and then all of a sudden coming out to you themselves. It’s just a huge flashbang so to speak, just traveling from somewhere where being queer isn’t entirely accepted and maybe majority looked down upon, to all of a sudden being extremely normal and accepted.
And with the added factor of the movies also being so normal about queer representation and seeing it across all ages in all ways is, for lack of a better word, crazy. Most of what I’ve experienced about having to be more subtle or worrying about passing constantly, all of that is banished away knowing that queerness here is the exact opposite definition. Being able to be unabashedly queer is something that I never thought would be a thing I would ever see, and even in our pre-trip meetings it felt like something that wasn’t as, well, casual as it actually is. With the movies included, seeing experiences of not necessarily myself but even people who share the same identity as me is extremely comforting. Even though I have friends and know plenty of people that share my same labels, seeing it on the big screen is something completely different. Your experiences are just there, on screen, and you can relate to them the same as any straight person can to the countless amount of straight romance movies.
But among the movies and flags and posters and everything else, it’s insane to me how queer people are socially allowed to be public in San Fran without having to worry about getting verbally assaulted or hate crimed. Girls showing love for other girls, guys doing the same, gay bars being common (though sadly there’s only one lesbian bar), and the sheer amount of pride that San Francisco has and embodies.
I’m going to be extremely upset once I leave San Fran and I have to go back to being a little more reserved with how I show I’m queer. Especially in some of the places I frequent the most: work, school, and honestly even just in my own neighborhood. But, even with all that said, I’m glad I’m here and able to have the ability to self-discover unlike any other immersion trip that currently exists.
